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The Ice Was Nice

It used to be “Ice is Nice”, a cliché for Arctic scientists who studied on the Arctic pack ice, 1970s to ‘90s.

In the 1970s the Arctic Ocean was frozen with an average pack ice thickness of about 3.64 meters (12’) and it was easy to keep a camp on a big floe for a year (The Arctic Ice Dynamics Joint Experiment). I enjoyed walking around on it, sleeping on it, and flying low over it to get data in the boundary layer. I wasn’t there when it broke apart under the mess tent.

Submarine transit ice thickness data goes back 50-years and the ice was about the same thickness until 1980 (Kwok and Drew Rothrock: August 6 in Geophysical Research Letters). Then it started decreasing, until it is now about 1.89m (6.2’) thick. And the extent is evidently decreasing.

There might be some who would dispute it, but when ice disappears, warming is the usual suspect. Since global temperature measurements in the same period have increased (less than a degree C, maybe 5 in the Arctic region), this is a likely cause of the vanishing ice.

This result didn’t appear in early general circulation models, mainly because the ice was poorly represented. New concepts incorporating increased heat fluxes and ice feedbacks yield better corresponding results. It is difficult to evalute the results, but they range from positive — a new open ocean, ready for cities to accommodate the overflowing populations — to negative, more heat absorption; Greenland ice melting, and increased methane and CO2 threatening a run-away-greenhouse effect.

And the ice was nice in glaciers and Antartica. But the glaciers are overwhelmingly decreasing, I don’t give time to deniers of this fact as it is one that I’ve seen for myself. But Antartica is a critical question, because the data is so complicated (The denial component can be found in Spectator.CO.UK.) and the possible implications for sea level rise so huge. I’m awaiting more data (that I can understand), but I do understand what the theory suggests is possible, and it isn’t good.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..